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Library 101: Halloween

Halloween is right around the corner! When we were children this meant that last minute excitement of putting together our Halloween costumes and scoping out the best route to get all the good candy. As adults it has come to mean something different; while some still dress up, and most still pig out on chocolate, adults usually celebrate the scary aspects of the holiday. The end of October is often filled with scary stories, haunted attractions, and horror movie marathons. This is where the library can assist you in putting fright into your nights.

The library has a ton of scary movies in their DVD collection but here are some classic Halloween favorites:

The Blair Witch Project (DVD PN 1997 .B577 1999)

The Birds (DVD PN 1997 .B565)

Dracula (DVD PN 1997 .B697 2007)

The Exorcist (DVD PN 1997 .E934)

Frankenstein (DVD PN 1997 .F73 2010)

Halloween (DVD PN 1997 .H1851 2007)

Halloween II (DVD PN 1997 .H18512 2001)

Halloween III (DVD PN 1997 .H1853 2003)

The Innocents (DVD PN 1997 .1555 2005)

Interview with the Vampire (DVD PN 1997 .I5784 2010)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (DVD PN 1997 .I59)

Night of the Living Dead (DVD PN 1997 .N525 2004)

Jaws (DVD PN 1997 .J38)

Nosferatu (DVD PN 1997 .N6715 2007)

The Others (DVD PN 1997 .O763)

Psycho (DVD PN 1997 .P786)

Rosemary’s Baby (DVD PN 1997 .R677)

The Shining (DVD PN 1997 .S457 2003)

Silence of the Lambs (DVD PN 1997 .S512)

The Sixth Sense (DVD PN 1997 .S5718 2000)

Zodiac (DVD PN 1997 .Z62)

Before films, horror was brought to everyone through literature. Some of the most infamous scary movies were actually based on novels by some of the most well-known authors in the horror and gothic genres. Take some time this Halloween season to check out one of the following scary classics from the main collection:

Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (PS 2600 .F66)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (PS 3519 .A392 H38)

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (PS 3568 .I265 I58 1997)

Dracula by Bram Stoker (PR 6037 .T617 D7 1973)

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (PS 3552 .L392)

Jaws by Peter Benchley (PS 3552 .E537)

The Shining by Stephen King (PS 3561 .I483 S5)

Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (PS 3558 .A6558 S5 1988)

While the works of Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, and Shirley Jackson are enough to give us nightmares, sometimes the tales that evoke the most fear are the tales of ghostly apparitions and unexplained noises heard often during the night. While these tales are usually shared by word of mouth sometimes these stories are in collections about the afterlife that can send chills down the spine and keep readers up at night. The library has several collections of ghost stories including:

If you want help in find these or any other scary books and movies to help get you in the Halloween spirit you can ask at the circulation desk! If we don’t have it, the public library in Abingdon might.